Should Mother 3 come to the West? Mother 3 is an RPG (Role-Playing Game) developed from the ground up by Nintendo. Mother 3 is the sequel to Mother 2, which is known as Earthbound outside of Japan. Mother 2 was a great game and critics had many good things to say about it. America on the other hand, were a little harsh to the newcomer. Critics mostly complained about the simple graphics the game used. EarthBound was intentionally created with 8-bit graphics to achieve a sort of nostalgia effect on players. But, 8-bit graphics can mean many different things. In EarthBound terms, the team just used a 256 color palette and a pixelated look. Having only 256 colors can limit what you can make in your game, but sometimes limitations can make you creative. Now Mother 3, being a sequel to EarthBound is similar to it in many ways whilst still managing to stay different. Mother 3 adopted the smaller bit graphics that EarthBound used, but instead of doing in purely out of nostalgia, they did it because of hardware limitations on the GBA (Game Boy Advance). The GBA is a handheld console similar to the Game Boy. The main difference is that the GBA has color support and better hardware. It was introduced in 2001, Mother 3 was released in 2006, only in Japan. Many Earthbound fans were broken to find out that Mother 3 wasn’t going to be released into the US. To this day many people, especially fans, would love to see a game they can pick up and play instantly. It’s hard and can technically be considered illegal to play a ROM of the game as it’s a form of piracy. A ROM is a device you can download on a computer to read certain files. In this case, it needs to be a software that can read GBA (Game Boy Advance) files. This allows games that you can’t play on a computer playable. Only if you have the right ROM and Files of course. This takes time and many sites can try to give you fake ROM’s. Many fans can’t play a game that is a part of their favorite franchise, due to legal concerns, and inability to read Japanese. Is there a good reason why Nintendo isn’t allowing globalized release of this game? Well, that’s a debatable topic. Most people who really want the game would say that Nintendo doesn’t have good reasons to not release good games. Others don’t know. The Main issue that Nintendo released to the public regarding the translation of Mother 3 was as stated. Nintendo was worried about how the game would be displayed. They do not believe that it would have a high reputation in the west. At least that is what they said the last time it was spoken about. There is a lot of controversial topics shown in the game which is a huge roadblock of it coming to America. Mother 3 displays acts of violence, abuse, torment, slavery, drugs, and other terrible things… I guess. The problem with those reasons is that many games these days display such things as well. The only exception is that they are rated ‘M’ for ‘Mature.’ These games are highly realistic in how they act and look, while Mother 3 has a pixely look to it. As do the other Mother games. Two big problems in Mother 3 are two scenes. One scene is of the 4 protagonists of the game eating mushrooms on the ground to regain their strength. The mushrooms do restore their strength, but it distorts the world around them. Creatures look like friends or inanimate objects. The screen will display hallucinations in a humoristic type manor. Displays of animal abuse have also been shown, child enslavement was in a small part of the game as well. Child labor was more or less shown as parents forcing their children to work at a factory in the main town of Tazmily. Very early in the game we are introduced to a character that is under enslavement by one of the antagonists of the game. They are forced to do their bidding and if they fail to do so they get shocked. They later on become freed by one of the protagonist. These all seem to be good reasons why they shouldn’t release the game into the us. Why would people care about these things though? The game doesn’t promote these things, after the halogens are taken and warn off the characters speak about never wanting to have an experience like that again. The protagonists’ job is to free their people from the influences of Porky’s army and reclaim their world as theirs once again. The game shows a lot of people doing good, not for themselves, but for the people they love (and don’t love). It is loved by so many EarthBound fans, why wouldn’t Mother 3 be loved in the same way? EarthBound was well received when it came to the US. Mother 3 is talked about so much in the us that if it came out to the US, it would probably be talked about even more. It may reach the point where someone who doesn’t know the series would get into it. A unique RPG with humor and good story, with a good combat system that keeps the player involved, a story that stays in once place that continues to get more and more interesting, unique characters that are hard to forget (no matter how much they change). There is so much good in the Mother franchise, only releasing one harms the EarthBound fandom. Everyone who knows EarthBound knows Mother 3 and they are itching to have it available to them. It may not seem like it, but people love to support Nintendo. A team of 14 freelanced workers put thousands of hours into translating Mother 3. They had no access to the original game so they had to find a hacked version and worked around that. They spent their time translating every sentence, every word, every character. Their main goal was to keep the Mother series’ charm while having the dialogue still make sense to the reader. They went out of their way to change ingame sprites to match english wise. To change the html of a game is one thing, to change the looks of ingame items is much more difficult to do. Especially if you are trying to keep it looking similar. To sum it all up, Nintendo believes that Mother 3 wouldn’t be well received for the 8-bit style of the game as Earthbound received the same reputation when it came to the west region. That isn’t all, the games display of violence, use of drugs, and animal abuse may make it hard to publish it with minimum backlash. They also can’t cut that content out as it takes up huge portions of the game. Even though Mother 3 is loved by the EarthBound fanbase, it is only so big and is the smaller fandom out of all other Nintendo games. The reason why Nintendo hasn’t said anything about Mother 3 as well is because they don’t talk about stuff that isn’t being worked on or isn’t ready to be shown. From what we know, Mother 3 coming to the West is not a lost idea. We just don’t know when it will come, or if it will. We can’t change what Nintendo does with its products, it may be too late for them to release it in the West anyways. We are just going to have to be patient. Sources:
http://starmen.net/mother2/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/earthbound-creator-shigesato-itoi-teases-a-re-release-for-his-cult-rpg/ https://www.ign.com/articles/2006/05/03/no-more-mother https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/20/e3-2018-yes-reggie-knows-how-much-you-want-mother-3-and-animal-crossing-for-switch http://starmen.net/mother3/ https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/29/earthbound-reissue-has-no-impact-on-mother-3-release-chances https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/01/16/earthbound-fans-are-releasing-a-book-about-years-of-hoping-for-a-mother-3-western-release-2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdjp4Peikfw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaIoW1aL9GE http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=378141&seqNum=6
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Cole LeahyI try to help people as much as possible, if you need anything just ask. Archives
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